Product DescriptionThe first time in paperback, this book is a personal biography of the beloved star of Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) was perhaps best known for her roles in Casablanca and Notorious, but she won three Oscars for Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express, and was a seven-time nominee. She also won two Emmy Awards and a Tony. In 1949, though married and a mother, she fell in love with director Roberto Rossellini and conceived a child with him. Her fans were shocked and she was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Chandler interviewed Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Cary Grant, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Gregory Peck for the book, which contains synopses of all her films, including the Swedish ones. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Are There Bones She Won't Pick?
There must be some literary sweatshop someplace where enslaved people crank out this author's biographies for her. Seldom more than glorified outlines, filled in with remembered conversations with subjects always conveniently dead, she rushes ravenously from corpse to corpse, cha-CHING-ing her way through Hollywood's most elite, leaving little of actual substance for readers to sink their teeth into.

You could write books of this caliber simply by going to Wikepedia for your basic story, Google Images to illustrate it, and then plumbing the most money-hungry depths of your own imagination for all those remembered conversations that never happened!

The really sad part is, I love almost everyone she's ever written a book about. I just hate her books.

Ingrid - a new perspective
All my life, I have been a fan of Ingrid Bergman.First I collected videos, now DVDs of her movies.I eagerly read everything I could find about her life and her film career.I have clipped magazine photos and articles.This book presents some new information from the perspective of her grown children, particularly Isabella. And I like the way the bio has the movie plot summaries inserted throughout the book as the movies were filmed and produced. After reading the biography, I bought Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde DVD through Amazon because I did not remember ever seeing the movie.As always, her acting is superb.And she was such a natural beauty before botox and plastic surgery and self-involved vanity came to define the 'actors' of today.For fans of Bergman, this is an excellent read!

Ingrid:Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography
We were interested in Ingrid Bergman since she was observed in seveal movies during our lifetime.She was a good actress and seemed to be a classy lady.A good review of the book had been observed, also.

Ingrid...A true view!
Having had a close, sweet friendship with Ingrid the last 12 years of her life, I can easily say that Ms Chandler's remembrances of Ingrid, marked by numerous interviews of family, friends & collegues rings very true!
Being privy to many personal aspects of Ingrid's life, visits to Choisel, dinners in Paris & London, etc., I was swept with nostalgia & memories of dear Ingrid as I read this marvelous story picturing Ingrid as she really was in her life.
Following a less than nice review of a play in London, Ingrid was appearing in, she wrote to me about that notice & said: "Let the dogs bark
the caravan moves on!" Typical Bergman.
Unpretentious, caring, sweet, natural, I loved Ingrid dearly, as a friend!
This book says it all!

ingrid
very disappointing no new facts or interesting untold published background on the star.

Product DescriptionFirst time in paperback: "A resoundingly successful biography" (Washington Post) and the basis for a major television miniseries this year.

The life of Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) is as compelling as that of any of the women she portrayed in dozens of unforgettable movies and plays-a list that includes Casablanca, Intermezzo, Gaslight, The Bells of St. Mary's, Notorious, Anastasia, and Hedda Gabler. Hers is a story that begins with a tragic childhood in Sweden, then moves on to the nightmare of Germany under the Nazis and later to Hollywood in its golden age. From her position as America's most beautiful, admired, and loved actress, she was plunged into national disgrace and branded "an apostle of degradation" for her adulterous love affair with Roberto Rosellini in the late 1940s. But her independent spirit triumphed in the end, winning her honors and accolades even as she fought an eight-year battle with cancer. Donald Spoto, who knew Ingrid Bergman and had unprecedented access to her husbands, friends, lovers, directors, and costars, as well as to her papers, letters, and diaries, has written a biography that the San Francisco Chronicle called "mesmerizing" and "deeply moving"-the definitive account of a consummate actress who dared to live the truth.Amazon.com ReviewWritten with the exhaustive thoroughness readers have come toexpect from Donald Spoto's celebrity biographies, Notoriousmoves smoothly through the details of actress Ingrid Bergman'slife. Although most will equate the book's title with the 1946Hitchock film that provided Bergman with one of her more complex andunusually dark roles, the very definition of the word proves anappropriate description of her life; derived from the Latinnotus, notorious is defined as "famous orcelebrated; secondarily, known for something not generallyapproved." Disapproval of Bergman--both virulent andfar-reaching--stemmed from her extramarital affair with director RobertoRosellini and the subsequent birth of their son (conceivedbefore their marriage). It is this fall from grace thatintrigues Spoto.

In 1939 Ingrid Bergman was hailed as afresh-faced girl, "dignified, gracious, unpretentious andspiritual," who represented everything good that America lovedand needed. Although already a wife and mother, she was most oftendescribed as innocent, even virginal. But in 1949 this perceptionchanged, and Bergman was no longer a martyr for the sake of hermovies; at the time, she was regarded as the foulest of sinners, arenegade whose "powerful influence for evil" was soon to becondemned in churches, schools, and even on the floor of theU. S. Senate. However, Spoto doesn't neglect Bergman's artistic driveand integrity; he creates a portrait of a woman on trial for aspiringto both professional success and intellectual fulfillment. The detailsaccrue to portray a disarmingly modest professional--at timesidolized, at times disparaged, but always skilled and committed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Reading this will make you want to go back and rent all Berman's films
Ingrid Bergman was an actress who acted on stage, screen and
television in five languages . . . doing so, she won three Academy
Awards, a Tony and an Emmy . . . and she lived a fascinating
life, as depicted in NOTORIOUS by Donald Spoto.

This is one of the best biographies that I have read in quite some
time . . . reading it made me feel as if I got to know Bergman
and what made her tick.

If you're a movie fan like me, you'll enjoy the behind-the-scenes
stories about her career, such as this one account of how she
came upon her screen name:

* The first meeting between Ingrid and David (Selznick), over cold
lamb and whiskey, continued as he returned to the subject of
her name, which he said was too German. What about renaming
her Ingrid Berryman? "Bergman is a good name and I like it," she
replied. "If I fail in American, I can go back to Sweden and still
be Ingrid Bergman."

I also liked reading about her take on acting:

* I haven't read many of those books about acting. I think
instinctively, and even the first time I read a script I know
exactly how the woman is. That is why I turn down many
things I don't understand. I must understand the character
completely; I mean, there must be something inside me that
is that person, and then immediately I feel it. It is more
a feeling than a technique.

And though there were a lot of names used throughout the book,
I did not feel that Spoto was mean-spirited in what he
had to say about Bergman or her many lovers. . . after all she
was, to quote the book's title, somewhat notorious . . . and she
did leave her first husband and daughter to have both an affair
and child out of wedlock with Italian director Roberto Rosselini.

Yet it was Spoto's account of her non-affair with Alfred Hitchcock
that I found particularly moving:

* But Hitchcock's immediate response that warm September afternoon
in his office was to remind Ingrid of the final scene in SPELLBOUND
between her and Michael Chekov, who had played her mentor. "It is very sad
to love and lose somebody," Hitchcock quoted, repeating the dialogue
of Dr. Brulov as he embraced the weeping Dr. Peterson, who fears she has
lost her lover forever. "But in a while you will forget and you will take up the
threads of your life where you left it not long ago. And you will work hard. There
is lots of happiness in working hard--maybe the most." The speech now had
a different application.

Ingrid at once recognized the words, and her eyes filled with tears. Hitchcock
had offered her com fort with the same words he spoke for himself: what other
refuge had they, these two lovers, but the work that lay before them? She might
not have Capa, but she had her work, and now her work was with him; as
for Hitchcock, he knew all too poignantly that yes, indeed, her work was with him,
but her heart was not--or rather her heart was with him as a daughter and friend.
They were both, in a way, lost souls. That quiet afternoon, they sat--allies in
distress, sipping gin martinis, smoking too much and finding in their unspoken
sympathies for each other the courage that comes from the deepest kind of love,
a caring beyond the jungle of sex and into the clearer field of affection.

I now want to go back and rent not only SPELLBOUND, but such other
Bergman classics as INTERMEZZO, GASLIGHT, ANASTASIA, and,
of course, NOTORIOUS.

A Valentine of Superlatives
I'd purchased this biography to learn more about a fascinating woman who left an indelible mark on her profession, acting.But my disappointment was great; this is less a biography than an infatuated paean -- something one might write for a fan club or public relations campaign.Though Mr. Spoto and his crew of researchers obviously undertook considerable investigation into Bergman's life, Mr. Spoto failed to complete the last -- and most important -- task of a biographer:a critical analysis of his subject.Instead, throughout the book, Mr. Spoto repeatedly (and I emphasize "repeatedly") flogs readers with superlatives about Bergman's acting, looks, intelligence, strength, spirit, wisdom, and character.Why the Pope hasn't yet canonized this woman, based on Mr. Spoto's writings, is beyond me -- perhaps it is only because she was not Catholic.I do hope that someday another biographer -- say, someone with the talents of Edward Tytell (biographer of Ezra Pound) or Noel Riley Fitch (biographer of Sylvia Beach and Julia Child) -- might undertake the task of penning a more informative, insightful biography of Bergman.The woman certainly deserves this.

So St. Ingrid she wasn't...
...so have you never made a mistake?We can thank her money-grubbing first husband Petter Lindstrom for her "indiscretions" with Roberto Rossolini and others---if he had spent more time as a loving mate instead of a calculating business manager who belittled Ingrid and put her on a paltry allowance, then maybe none of the nonsense which haunted her for so long would have happened at all.He played the boss, but she was the bread winner, and the shame of it is she let him get away with it!!

She had the same emotional needs as any other woman OR man.But only under the moralistic hyprocrisy of the U.S. at the time could such a woman (I doubt if a man would) have been so pilloried---the rest of the planet was not so hung up as we on attempting to be the guardian of world morals, especially when we had more than enough of our own dirty laundry we kept trying to hide.

No matter, because her beauty, wit and talent counted for more, and in the end she won anyway.She knew her craft well (who else would have felt secure enough to suggest script changes to Hitchcock, and have him acquiesce??) and lived it not at all for money or fame, but rather for the sake of the craft itself.And what she left to stage and screen through the body of her work, through her very presence, will forever be her only true legacy.

Not quite "Notorious"
She was Hollywood's golden girl, an actress who shone on the silver screen but never burned out. Despite worldwide fame, Ingrid Bergman's life was riddled with tragedies and problems, including an affair that could have wrecked her career.

Ingrid Bergman lost her parents, then her beloved aunt, as a young girl. Growing up in Nazi Germany, she soon became an actress and rose to fame, first in Sweden and then in Hollywood. Then problems arose -- Ingrid met one of her favorite directors, Roberto Rossellini, and left her husband for a whirlwind movie shoot/love affair. The scandal was overwhelming, and it was years until the stigma evaporated -- after which Ingrid was appreciated all over again for her talent and courage.

Donald Spoto's telling of Bergman's life is solid and informative, with quotations by Ingrid, her husbands, children, costars, directors, and lots of other people who had known her. Letters are reproduced, and her different performances are analyzed (some of these movies were downright terrible).

He also does a pretty good job of analyzing Ingrid's motivations -- why she was attracted to the elitist Peter and passionate Roberto, her strong artistic sense, her workaholic attitude, and her feelings about her children and loves. It's a pretty good analysis, overall.

Despite the title, the book isn't a dirt-fest. In fact, that's one of its weaknesses. Oh, it shouldn't be showing only her flaws, but Spoto seems to adore her a little too much. She herself is quoted as saying that she's imperfect. Even though Spoto reveals her weaknesses and failures, he doesn't seem to think any of them really matter.

It definitely could have used better perspective, but "Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman" is a solid, interesting, well-written look at the life of a talented, artistic woman. Highly recommended.

Don't mistake the title
This book isn't about everything bad that Ingrid did, even though that's the impression the title gives. This is a well and thoroughly researched and very readable biography. Donald Spoto speaks about Ingrid with respect, and although he mentions her weaknesses and failings, I don't feel he's doing it to spread dirt around. If it happened it happened, but he doesn't spend half the book talking about it.

Except where it concerns Rossellini, and that is perfectly understandable, because everyone who knows about Ingrid knows that was a real and terrible time in her life. I think it's sad that she went through all that and the marriage ended up falling apart anyway.

Anyway, basically he speaks of her work. She went crazy without it, and really as I think about it her life was work. That's what I remember froming reading this.

It is a very good book, and like everything I have read by Spoto, is well-written and highly interesting. I recommend it very much.

Is this a creative review or what? I seem to be suffering some sort of blank as far as reviews are concerned this morning.
... Read more

Product DescriptionIngrid Bergman - winner of three Academy Awards - tells her own story both onstage and off. The book describes her relationships with the characters she knew and worked with, including Selznick, Garbo, Bogart, Gary Cooper and Ingmar Bergman. Above all, she reveals the story of her personal life - her childhood in Sweden, her marriages (including her dramatic and controversial elopement with Roberto Rossellini), and, in more recent years, her battle against cancer. She died in 1982. ... Read more

Born, in 1916, an only child who by her teens had lost her parents, Bergman was passed across Europe to be raised among distant family.Identity confusion, suspicion for authority, disrespect for religion, and feelings of inadequacy were to permeate her life from those early days.Frequently, Berman claims that motion pictures and the theater saved her from personal disaster and death.

Suggesting early on (the first page) that she wrote this book to voice her side in the media driven scandals of her life, this text clears the air about what happened with Bergman.Block buster movie parts, three marriages, four kids, three Oscars, multiple six and seven digit salaries, celebrity friendships, and her personal attitudes are all considered in this life story.Readers hear about her love for champagne, cravings for tobacco, love of ice cream, aptitude for languages (she was fluent in at least five), weakness for domineering men, financial ineptitude, and continual pursuit of the best part.Her first love was always acting.

Much of Bergman's life played like one of her movies.The pretty girl gets all the kudos, excitement, money, and fame until they run their course into a tragic ending leaving her holding the bag.Often Ingrid finds herself stuck in a far-away country with few resources and even fewer options.(It is informative to realize that many, if not most, of Berman's roles, from the beginning with "Intermezzo" in 1939, featured marital infidelity.)But in the end a movie mogul rose up to save her with a brilliant part, such as "Casablanca", "Joan of Arc", "Anastasia", "Indiscreet", "Inn of the Sixth Happiness", or "A Woman Called Golda".Maybe moviedom saved her, after all.

The sheer length of this book keeps it from earning additional stars.It takes a time commitment with nearly 500 pages.Of particular interest are Bergman's personal reflections and stories.We hear that Gary Cooper and Cary Grant were her favorite male stars, that Bogart was unapproachable, that Spencer Tracy liked to give flowers to his leading ladies, that mentor and producer David Selznick always paid himself first, and that Hemmingway considered himself her surrogate father.Howard Hughes, she suggests, offered her RKO studios (perhaps out of romantic feelings for Bergman).Ingrid also had her enemies starting with fellow Swede Greta Garbo and ending with her second husband (of six years) the Italian director Rossellini.The book was published in 1980 (two years before her death at the young age of 66).

Bergman also tells the gripping stories of her flight from Europe on the verge of World War II (with a harrowing tour through Nazi Germany on the eve of Britain's declaration of war) and her return to the continent in a performing company to the recently victorious American GIs in 1945.Her eye witness account of Europe's war time destruction alone justifies the costs of this memoir.This book is recommended to all with an interest in Ingrid Berman, the motion picture industry of the 1930s-1970s, and celebrity tell-alls.

TALE OF TWO SWEDES
.....I bought "My Story" by Ingrid Bergman to compare it with "A Life Apart" an autobiography of Greta Garbo, the original Swedish import that dominated American audiences.

.....There were many similarities between the careers of the two women. Both were beautiful, blonde and came to America under contract without speaking a word of English. Both were loyal Swedes who were cremated and had their ashes interred in Sweden. Both had attended the same Acting school in Stockholm and both were great actresses.

.....But while Garbo eventuallity adopted America as her home and became a Naturalized citizen, Bergman always considered herself a European and eschewed American Culture. After reading Garbo's book my admiration for her as a person was enhanced and I started a Garbo dvd collection beginning with Camille (her favorite) and Queen Christiana (her last movie with John Gilbert) as an aside, to show how much power Garbo weilded over her career, Louis B Mayer the tyranical head of MGM hated Gilbert and had vowed to destroy his career even if it cost him millions. But Garbo wanted Gilbert as her co-star and forced Mayer to back down.

.....After I read Bergman's book my opinion of her as a person was diminished. While Garbo jealously guarded her privacy and maintained a strict boundary between her screen personna and her private life, Bergman flaunted her private life with a Devil may care attitude. She wrote her book on the advice of her son Roberto so that the public would know "her side" of the story. If she thought her side would make her fans understand her actions, it did not help her image in my case.

..... What I got out of her book, which was badly written and a bore, was that she was an egomaniac whose world revolved around herself and she was unwilling to sacrifice her own desires and pleasures for the benefit of others, including her children. When she became bored with her marriage to Dr Lindstrom she deserted him and her daughter Pia and shacked up with a married man (Rossellini) and bore his out-of-wedlock child ...in my opinion, no amount of sugar coating will change the fact that she behaved like a selfish tramp.

.....Then she had the gall to be shocked when the audiences that adored her as Mother Superior in "The Bells of Saint Mary" rejected her for behaving like a horny slut. She even tried to make Doctor Lindstrom look like the bad guy for not allowing her daughter Pia visit her in Italy. The Doctor wisely knew that once in Italy, Rossellini would have had the courts keep her in the Country and thus steal her from her father who had been a faithful husband and a good parent.

.....Sorry Ingrid, if you were looking for sympathy for your lifestyle choices, you will get none from me. While I don't expect movies stars be be the characters they portray on the screen, I at least expect them to show some discretion in their private lives. If I do not respect the person, it is hard for me to accept the actor. For instance, it is hard for me to buy Rock Hudson as Doris Day's lover when I know he would rather be kissing Gomer Pyle.

good content, average writing
I frequently read biographies and autobiographies.I was a bit disappointed in this one.The content is good, however the writing is simply average I thought.The parts Ingrid wrote herself were the most interesting; the parts written by the biographer were dull (this book alternated between Ingrid's writing and the biographer).The format was a bit odd as well, with the alternation.I'm about 400 pages into the book and not sure I will finish it.I enjoyed it for the most part, but I find I am getting a bit bored with it.

Her Story, Completely
I was tempted to read one of the many biographies out there depicting the life of Ingrid Bergman before I found "My Story", and I am incredibly grateful that I found her story before the others.This book shines with Ingrid's own personal voice, and in so much of the book you can clearly hear her lilting charm creeping into your brain, so familiar and real that you could almost swear she was talking to no one else in the world but you at that moment.It takes a truly gifted person to transfer that much of themselves and their life's story onto simple pages in a book.

And what a story.Orphaned at a young age, she struggled with her incredible shyness throughout her childhood until she found solitude and happiness on the stage and in front of the camera. America and David O. Selznick wooed her over the Atlantic after a blossoming film career in Sweden, when several American reviewers poked humourous fun at the fact that Swedish movies of that time were rapidly becoming far superior to their American counterparts, thanks to the acting skills of one fair lady. Of course, the world knows about her now infamous illicit affair with Roberto Rossilini when she reigned in American movies with Selznick (she was comdemned on the Senate floor afterward for being so unwholesome in her choice), but her story doesn't revolve around excusing what she did.She explains the simple facts of the matter, with a bit of why, and she moves on, just as the American people did when they welcomed her back after a 7-year exile in Europe in her Oscar-winning performance as Anastasia.I don't even know how they resisted her that long, really.

But her life is an incredibly invoking read, with her ability to place herself within the pages as well as her fascinating history interweaving to form an unforgettable tale.This is one book that I can assure will not be forgotten easily. As she herself said "I went from saint to [...] and back again, all in one lifetime."Not many can say that, and not many can tell it with such grace.Truly a remarkable woman.

A unique life
She made films with some of the best directors of the 20th century, weathered one of its biggest scandals, and is still known and loved for her performance in the classic "Casablanca." In "My Story," Ingrid Bergman (with the help of Alan Burgess) presented her unique life in her own words.

Orphaned as a child, Bergman became a successful actress in Sweden, and then transferred to Hollywood, where she starred in films such as "Casablanca" and several Alfred Hitchcock pictures. Al In "My Story," Bergman describes not only her working life, but the men she fell in love with and married (three wildly different men!), her four children, her ambitions ("Joan of Arc" was something she wanted to make for years), the scandals and the love that filled her career, and the cancer that ultimately ended her life.

Bergman's story has a candid quality that not many star autobiographies have. She had almost universal sympathy for others, such as her more difficult diectors and costars, or her ex-husbands. One moving passage has her describing how she wept at Rossellini's death, and was happy that third ex-husband Lars had become a father. Her writing isn't very detailed; at times, it's downright stilted. But it's pleasant enough to read, with elements of humor, of romance, of joy and sadness.

Between Bergman's anecdotes and stories, Burgess explains Bergman's life further, with "Ingrid got this part" or "Ingrid went here" or "this person said this thing about Ingrid." He quotes her frequently, along with letters, costars, and plenty of other information that Bergman might not have remembered or known about. He fills in the gaps, so to speak.

Bergman's bright personality and Burgess's tight journalism make this a unique book, describing the life of a unique woman. "My Story" is definitely worth telling.
... Read more

"Ingrid Bergman was only really Ingrid from Casablanca [1942] to Under Capricorn [1949]--seven years."
(3.5 stars) In the first biography of his new Great Stars series, which also includes Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and Bette Davis, author David Thomson examines the career of Ingrid Bergman, from her makeup-free screen test for David O. Selznick (1939) through Autumn Sonata (1978) made with Ingmar Bergman. Using the plots of her films as a framework for placing Bergman's life and career into perspective, Thomson shows how each film drew on her life experience and increasing maturity to provide added depth to her characterizations. Thomson, a film critic, film historian, and author is uniquely suited for this role, and as he presents each film and critiques Ingrid Bergman's performances, the reader sees her growing on both the personal and professional levels.

Her breakthrough performance, Casablanca (1942), made with Humphrey Bogart when she was twenty-seven, made her the darling of the American public. Each subsequent film for the next seven years added to Bergman's luster. For Whom the Bell Tolls with Gary Cooper (1943); Gaslight (1944) with Charles Boyer, for which she won an Academy Award; Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), with Gregory Peck; Saratoga Trunk (1945) with Gary Cooper; The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), with Bing Crosby; Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), with Cary Grant; Arch of Triumph (1948), with Charles Boyer; Victor Fleming's Joan of Arc (1948); and Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949), with Joseph Cotton--an amazing ten huge successes in seven years--attest to her work ethic and her popularity.

Instinctive and natural as an actress, and impulsive and romantic as a person, Bergman conveyed sensuality at the same time that she conveyed innocence, and the public loved her. They saw her as Sister Mary Benedict in Bells of St. Mary's and as Joan of Arc. Her affairs with Gary Cooper and Victor Fleming were never publicized. Her flagrant affair with Roberto Rossellini, her pregnancy, and her out-of-wedlock child in 1950 shocked the public which had believed her image. Bergman remained the US until 1956, when she made Anastasia, with Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes, for which she won another Academy Award.

Bergman was never again regarded as the darling of the audience, no matter how well respected she may have been as an actress, making new kinds of films, such as Rossellini's neo-realism and Ingmar Bergman's films of darkness and despair. These non-Hollywood films may have made audiences more sophisticated but led to a change in the Hollywood studio scene and its star system. Thomson successfully recreates Ingrid Bergman's career through his attention to her films, leaning heavily on them to convey the ups and downs of her life, without relying on original research to present new information. The book is a fascinating walk down memory lane, and those who may have regarded Ingrid Bergman as a megastar for most of her career may be as shocked as I was to see how limited this period of her life really was. Mary Whipple
... Read more